Onboarding

What is it?

A redesign of Yulu’s onboarding experience in response to rapid growth in 2019. As more users joined and new services were added, the existing flow needed to better guide users, explain how Yulu works, and help them get started smoothly.

The challenge

In 2019, Yulu was growing rapidly in the electric-mobility space but faced a key challenge: improving the onboarding experience to keep up with that growth. The goal was to make it easier for users to understand how Yulu works, what services are offered, and how to get started quickly and confidently.

The approach

Building a more educational, scalable journey, flexible enough to leave room for experimentation. It centred on a few principles:

• Educate customers about Yulu’s model.
• Use design-system components to build a visual language.
• Create illustrations that set the standard for the rest of the app.
• Let anyone sign up and use the services.
• Improve the existing experience and add the missing flows.

The first version had been built and shipped by developers, with major issues and missing features, so it was imperative to bring change, and a bit of delight, to the experience.

The first version of onboarding.

Improving the experience

Onboarding wasn’t only about educating users. It had to fix what was already there. A detailed audit surfaced several issues hurting usability and engagement:

• Tutorials placed after login were skipped, so they barely landed.
• Usability gaps: tiny tap targets (e.g. Resend OTP), poor spacing, unclear errors.
• A referral program users struggled to understand and apply.
• No password reset, and sign-up limited to Indian numbers, excluding international users.

The audit.

Educational, not conversational

In 2019 the focus was on building and gradually expanding a design system, not a full app revamp in one go. Each feature was redesigned one at a time, starting with Profile, then Onboarding.

Goals to achieve

Enhancements focused on getting users to understand Yulu’s working model: “pick up a bike from a Yulu Zone → unlock & ride → drop it at a Yulu Zone.” This was early in Yulu’s journey, so we were still learning who our users were.

The process

This was my first major project while I was still learning the foundations of design. To understand the drop-offs, the PM and I spoke directly with users to find where and why they lost interest, and I mined App Store and Play Store feedback for more.

Sketching the onboarding.

The illustrations

Onboarding was designed to tell the story of how Yulu works, with illustration and motion at the centre. These visuals also laid the foundation for a consistent illustration style across the whole app.

Character exploration.

Final design